Fake it or Ask

Have you ever been in a situation where you were not sure what was going on?  How did you respond?  Were you nervous?  How did you deal with the emotions that uncertainty created in you?  Did you withdraw?

In Mark 9:2 – 13 (here @ Bible Gateway), Peter finds himself in a situation for which he has no categories.  Read the passage and note how he deals with being uncomfortable.

This reads to me like a catalog of how we handle situations where we have no clue what is happening:

• Not knowing what to say, we speak.
• We talk about side issues rather than what is really going on.
• We are afraid to ask questions, we would appear ignorant.
• We become invested in tangential issues that we can “understand” rather than engaging in trying to understand what we are really experiencing.

While I am not a psychologist by training – just about as far from that discipline as one can get – I have both done some of these and observed others doing these in situations that were difficult to process.

It seems that what we can learn from Peter here is that when things are confusing, we need to ask the Lord for direction.